>> It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the co

>> It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity. Agreed but that really is like an investment. Typical returns investors are looking for are 10x their investment. Investing in 10 companies 9 might lose money while one makes money and covers the rest. VC use this to spread risk and accept failure as part of some investment, so should spreading the opportunity and subsequent results of any plan. There are lessons in success and more lessons in failure which make them better, same with people in many cases. With allowing people an opportunity to go to college who want to, you probably get 1 in 10 or even 1 in 100 that might end up bring more opportunity and economic benefits than all the others combined, just like investment in companies. If some part of their success was luck, luck is spread around more. The problem is people focus on the failures and not the successes or the dim spots and not the bright ones, same thing happens when you talk about welfare, healthcare and others, we focus on the failures not the successes. I guess it is a glass half full or glass half open sort of thing. I tend to think that people that get an opportunity that they might not have otherwise had, do very well or try to and have some responsibility to make good on that help. On the flipside, a bunch of entitled kids get the benefits and may not have the same drive to do good in life as they haven't seen the bad enough. There might be 9 out of 10 opportunities squandered but just one has to be successful that can pay for the others and make the others worthwhile. It is good to criticize but also may not be something that is obvious in the short term regarding success rates. Luck plays a factor into the outcomes quite heavily but lack of opportunity usually ends how we expect it, better to have some chance of improvement than none.